Paula Allen: Texana Room on chopping block

In 1994, when librarian Jo Myler told me that the new enchilada-red San Antonio Public Library was going to have a whole room dedicated to San Antonio and Texas history and genealogy, it sounded too good to be true.

Express-News

Published 4:41 am, Sunday, September 6, 2009

In 1994, when librarian Jo Myler told me that the new enchilada-red San Antonio Public Library was going to have a whole room dedicated to San Antonio and Texas history and genealogy, it sounded too good to be true.

Rare and valuable books, newspaper clipping files and other fragile resources would be stored under climate-controlled conditions but would be made available. There would be a microfilm area, with microfilm readers and reels containing more than a century's worth of San Antonio newspapers, state records and other documents invaluable for family-history researchers.

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There would be public computers with access to databases for historical and genealogical research and plenty of space for books on Texas history and genealogical publications that would cover most of the planet Earth.

Best of all, there would be a staff dedicated to helping members of the public answer their questions on San Antonio and Texas history, as well as the sagas of their own families, and the department would be open during all library hours.

When the new Central Library at 600 Soledad opened in May 1995, there really was a Texana/Genealogy Room, and it was everything Myler - its first manager - had said it would be. It was a first-class facility, no less than a city with more than 300 years of recorded history deserves.

Without this facility and its staff, many of the questions sent to this column during the past 15 years might not have been answered, or at least not as precisely. The Texana Room has resources so deep I am still discovering them, and the staff has kept up with acquisitions and accepted important donations.

You don't have to be published in the newspaper to get attention from the Texana staff. They field questions by phone and in person from students who have to write a Texas history paper, Cub Scouts who need to know their state flower and motto, beginners at genealogy and lonely souls who turn up at the Texana counter because the people behind it are always polite and friendly. The staff works nights and weekends because that is the only time some students, working people and out-of-towners can come to the downtown library and do their research.

I said that this arrangement sounded too good to be true for San Antonio, a low-income city accustomed to making do with less, and apparently I was right. Although our history is one aspect of the city we can all share and be proud of, although history is a powerful tourist attraction here, it is going to be considerably less accessible to people who don't have a lot of pull with city officials.

As of this writing, if the proposed city budget passes Sept. 17, Texana/Genealogy is going on the chopping block. Service hours are to be cut from 72 to 40 hours a week, and two full-time librarian positions - 40 percent of the department's staff - are to be eliminated. Besides reduced hours, that means Texana won't be able to offer as many genealogy and research classes. Nobody expects the volume of queries to drop off, so it also means that it will be a lot harder to keep up with requests from the public.

Early this past week, I e-mailed library director Ramiro Salazar to ask who the source of the Texana-shrinking proposal was and what he thought of it. As of this writing, he hasn't gotten back to me.

At the same time, there is some good news on the local-history front. Although the city archivist's position is open, City Clerk Leticia Vacek says it will be filled within the next month, after the budget is passed. Vacek, who originated the position a few years ago, says she was able to justify to city budget staff that an archivist - who preserves, organizes and makes records available to the public - was necessary "due to the culturally rich and very historic city that we are."

To express an opinion on the proposed Texana/Genealogy Room cutbacks, write to library director Salazar at rssalazar@?sanantonio.gov or to City Manager Sheryl Sculley, citymanager@sanantonio?.gov. To contact City Council members about this issue, visit www.san?antonio.gov and go to the Mayor and City Council page, which lists council members with phone numbers and e-mail addresses.

T time: Ford Model T's will cruise around each of the Spanish Colonial missions in the San Antonio Missions National Historical Park, plus Espada Aqueduct, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday. Car owners from the T Fords of Texas group will be in the drivers' seats, with opportunities for the public to take rides and as photograph the classic vehicles.

"The dawn of the automobile era helped to save San Antonio's missions," says Hugh Hemphill, a T Fords member and author of the recently published "San Antonio on Wheels," a history of surface transportation here. "Once more folks could easily get to see (the missions), the fact they were collapsing became a much more pressing issue."